Accordingly, the European Commission formulated a new «European Neighbourhood Policy» (ENP) that «aims to create a «ring of friends» around the EU by actively promoting democratic political and legal reform and economic liberalization in sixteen European and Mediterranean countries» (2). Although the ENP’s sixteen «ring of friends» included the non-Mediterranean nations of Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Jordan, Moldova, Palestinian Territories (Gaza on the Mediterranean but a special case), and Ukraine, they are not included in this study, which is limited to the diverse twenty-two Mediterranean countries. According to a «2008 GO-EuroMed report», «The region remains differentiated in terms of political governance, mainly in terms of differing ideologies and the establishment of autocratic, authoritarian, and totalitarian regimes. Obstacles to building confidence are more political than cultural, as conflicts are aggravated by a lack of trust among Arab leaders rather than the general population in the “Arab street”» (6, p. 38).
Governance in Mediterranean Countries
Various GO-EuroMed documents stress the importance of «governance» in Mediterranean countries, especially those not in the EU, usually without defining what «governance» means. Russian scholar Mikhail Ilyin finds that it is not a clear and coherent concept, saying that «A host of fuzzy meanings have resulted in an undifferentiated semantical overlap. <…> The term, nowadays, may be seen to encapsulate a variety of modes of coordinating individual action, or basic forms of social order (7, p. 4). For example, a report of the «Institut de la Méditerranée» (Mediterranean Institute) said: «Governance can be defined as coordination between government, local and regional authorities, multilateral organizations but also private actors, companies and NGOs, coordination that results in public policies, decisions and projects» (10, p. 11).
Unfortunately, this definition is not very useful. By equating governance with «coordination», one is led to think, «the better the coordination, the better the governance». By definition, that would be true, regardless of how well the policies, decisions, and projects benefited the people being governed. Moreover, it is not at all clear how one can measure «coordination between government, local and regional authorities» and the other sets of actors.